How Elephants Are Surviving Against All Odds

Elephants are a fascinating keystone species that knocks down trees, creates new trails through the brush and digs watering holes that can be used by other animals. However, they have been poached for centuries and their role in their ecosystem is at risk. In this video we explore how the elephant has so far managed to survive the ivory trade, where populations are declining and increasing as well as some concrete examples of what has been done to conserve them.
We will cover both the African and Asian species.
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ABOUT THIS VIDEO
Elephant species are spread across two continents, Africa and Asia.
All of them are keystone species, meaning their presence is particularly crucial to their respective environments, yet they remain among the most trafficked animals on the planet. That’s why we’re talking about them in this miniseries about the survival stories of the most trafficked species on the planet.
00:00 Intro
01:21 The history of ivory
02:47 The rise of elephants in Kenya
03:30 The first ivory burns
04:09 Potential problems going forward
04:43 The state of elephants in Tanzania
05:53 Conservation gone wrong
06:52 Forest Elephants VS Savannah Elephants
08:13 Mossy Earth advert
09:13 What about Asian Elephants?
10:30 An unforeseen consequence
11:05 The future of the ivory trade
11:48 How can we all help?
12:34 Summary
#MossyEarth #rewilding #conservation

[@notalltheories]

No one on this planet needs ivory except elephants 😤

[@MossyEarth]

I couldn't agree more! - Cheers, Duarte

[@Saber23]

No we actually do need ivory

[@Saber23]

And plastics cause even more damage

[@juuu5269]

U can buy ivory from native people in Alaska

[@Treinbouwer]

​@Ju Uu You could also collect ehat you cut of your nails, because they are made of ivory.

[@hannahkirkland5712]

Good job highlighting the even more critical state of the forest elephant. There is still so much we don't know about forest elephants, but hopefully as more people become aware of them they can receive the attention (in terms of research and conservation) they need and deserve! 🐘

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Hannah! It is a dynamic that I personally was not aware of but was very interested to learn about. Hopefully their prospects improve.

[@Lord_of_Proboscidea]

Yes thank you! :D

[@Spiracle]

It was heartbreaking to see all the damage that has been done, but there's a lot more hope around the current situation than I initially thought! Still a ton of work to be done, but the worldwide public opinion seems to finally be swaying against ivory for good this time

[@MossyEarth]

It is a sad topic to cover but a worthy one. Good job on the video Tom!

[@Araanor]

I love how this channel isn't all doom and gloom. seeing the results of successful conservation and rewilding efforts, gives more hope and motivation to try harder than when they say it's all to late.

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Araanor, we try to stay positive and act instead of being paralysed in fear. - Cheers, Duarte

[@manderly109]

This is a great video. Allen savory has admitted his mistake and said he’ll take it to his grave. He knows he fucked up. He also has noted the elephants’ importance in actually maintaining the environment and even reversing desertification (what he initially thought they were causing). Common sense tells us that animals native to an environment do not degrade that environment, they play a crucial role. I’m glad more people seem to be realizing this. Thanks so much for sharing.

[@anandkothari9616]

For decorative products marble is a very good substitute. It has always been used in India for decoration. Also in India elephant is associated with God Ganesha which brings in a sense of closeness with elephants for us.

[@TheTdZt]

Knowing the history and broader context of this issue is so interesting and important. Also, those thermal images in of the forest elephant are so cool! I always find it exciting when technology unlocks new possibilities for research and conservation.

[@MossyEarth]

Agreed! Maybe we need to explore what we could do with thermal imaging as well 🤔

[@PaulCoxC]

Really interesting to see all the different sides to it, and the natural "experiments" giving a hint at the impact different regulations have. Always good to be reminded that we need to be careful with interventions as well, although the mass killing mentioned here is a particularly extreme one that we wouldn't want to replicate! It also shows the importance of getting local communities involved and on-board, to combat both poaching, and to reduce the economic tension that giving space to elephants entails for a lot of them.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

Interesting suggestion I heard was dosing seized ivory with radium then allowing it back into the black market, so that the end nations can detect them easily at ports of entry.

[@MossyEarth]

That's definitely a viable tactic, the majority of ivory is trafficked via boats so it's a great tool to catch them! Anti-poaching teams and organisations have a lot of weapons up their sleeves to combat the trade, and it's becoming less and less profitable to deal in ivory, so hopefully the trade will be a distant memory soon enough. - Tom

[@DH-xf2qp]

Great video and great subject. Hard to believe people would kill such magnificent creatures for a tooth. Keep up the good work.

[@MossyEarth]

The killings are sad but as you said the fact that it is all so pointless is what is baffling and frustrating - Cheers, Duarte

[@matthewdavies5875]

Another fascinating video guys!

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Matt!

[@EmaDurao10]

Beautiful Animals 😍 Amazing Video!!!

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Ema!

[@misscamillacakes]

Thanks for consistent, great content :) Hopefully the time will come soon that we appreciate animals as they are

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Camilla! I look forward to that time :) - cheers, Duarte

[@DuartedeZ]

Great job on the video Tom! Happy to work with you on this one :)

[@timozkurt7944]

A lot covered in this video that gives you a broader perspective on the issue and its complications and challenges. Really hope the shift in perception in China triggers more widespread change or is at least one of the necessary driving factors to help stabilise their numbers.

[@thomasnagyberry]

Such amazing creatures!

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Tom!

[@TheBobador]

Great video! I can tell a lot of research went into this one. Can't wait for the next episodes! 🐘

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Bob! It was quite a bit of effort but hopefully everyone can learn a bit from it :)

[@naer92]

I truly recommend this video. Thanks for this very informative piece.

[@ChandravijayAgrawal]

really great information about elephants, in my state Elephant count is less than 1000, and no counting done for past 2 years

[@Nitka022]

Heart breaking statistics but there is light at the end of the tunnel. We may as yet save these beautiful creatures and with habitats protections make help them to thrive. Thank you for this amazing video.

[@jessem2117]

Thanks for the great content! Well-researched, informative, and easy to understand. Hope you keep picking up viewers.

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Jesse! The algorithm has been nicer to us recently :)

[@mammamiia08]

I saw a story somewhere where farmers had successfully used bees to make elephants not walk on their lands. Apparently the elephants doesn't like them and avoid them if they can (understandable!). That seemed like a fascinating project! I wonder if it led somewhere.

[@Johan_Steffensen]

Good work

[@shawnohagan5503]

Great video

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you Shawn, glad you enjoyed it!

[@Lord_of_Proboscidea]

Hopefully this video brings more awareness to the elephants problem. I’m super happy this has been addressed:D

[@MossyEarth]

We hope so too! Glad you enjoyed it. Cheers! - Diogo

[@Lord_of_Proboscidea]

😃😃

[@phantom-xb6wv]

such beautiful creatures, i truly hope they survive the century

[@farmworkMi]

I've made it a goal to watch everyone of your videos

[@beancole]

I think mossy earth should also point out the tremendous good that Allan Savory has done since. He has a pragmatic system for revesing desertification and actually has a significant impact on farming practices and in turn climate change and species/habitat loss.

[@Labroidas]

I like this video, but you shouldn't have mentioned Allan Savory only in the negative. He was very young back then and only applied what he had learned at university, because it was taught back then that only overgrazing leads to desertification. He is the person that realized FIRST that this is wrong, and that elephants and other large herds of megaphauna are actually vital in keeping the landscape alive, and he has worked for the past 60 years to proliferate that message. He is also very open about his mistake, and uses it to educate people. You should really have mentioned that when speaking about him, is accomplishments and his message are too important.

[@solar0wind]

He's a sketchy person. While it's good that he now advocates for elephants, he still promotes disproven "science" as if it were a fact. E.g. rotational grazing. I'm not sure whether that concept is disproven in every situation, but it definitely doesn't work in some of the situations he claims it to be effective. I'd avoid this man if possible.

[@Labroidas]

@@solar0wind can you cite a source that disproves it?

[@solar0wind]

@@Labroidas Sure. There are two highly-cited sources: "Rotational Grazing on Rangelands: Reconciliation of Perception and Experimental Evidence" (2008) This says that there is no benefit. "Origin, Persistence, and Resolution of the Rotational Grazing Debate: Integrating Human Dimensions Into Rangeland Research" (2011) This says that there _can_ be a positive effect depending on what your goals are, but that there's robust evidence that it doesn't work for purely ecological goals, but that "human variables" have been excluded from those experiments. And if you include them, you can have a positive effect. I'm not sure what exactly those human variables are because the paper was published by Elsevier, which is a publisher that German unis (like the one where I study biology) don't have access to because Elsevier wants to rip German (tax-payer funded!) unis off, so the unis refuse to pay Elsevier a cent until the company makes an acceptable offer. Maybe you have access to the full texts.

[@Labroidas]

@@solar0wind Thanks, I will read them

[@freshboy3968]

Synthetic ivory? Woah, technology...

[@kakashi91197]

Where they thriving?! Those words made my day

[@Michaelkaydee]

Kenya 🇰🇪 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

[@sheepsheep_sheep1061]

Is there any plans to continue this series? This topic i feel needs to be covered more

[@ThatBritishHomestead]

I see what you mean about it being no longer needed.. in the past we had no way of making synthetic materials.

[@MossyEarth]

Yes, I can see the appeal of these materials 300 years ago, but today they are obsolete and should hopefully become worthless.

[@ThatBritishHomestead]

@@MossyEarth hopefully

[@mister-iy2ii]

very nice videos sir

[@MossyEarth]

Thank you my friend :)

[@jollyjokress3852]

The thing is: elephant needs lot of land but shares it. Human: takes even more land and doesn't share it.

[@Baamthe25th]

I think it's a bit unfair to Savory mentionninghim in such an off handed manner. He wasn't alone on this, he was following the "science" at the time and he's the guy who learned from this mistake (and all the underlying ideas). That's why he's perhaps the guy denouncing this kind of ideas the most

[@beancole]

Savory is a great man. He's actually effecting wholesale change in the farming industry.

[@julieschleiss-andreassen693]

Such a pointless and horrible industry. Hopefully the decreasing demand will put a final stop to it soon..

[@totallynot572]

I got this recommended

[@jonel_sved]

Hey, from where did you get these pictures of animals? 1:18 thanks for any answers, because I can't find them...

[@blaarghwee]

Hey Mossy, I remember reading about fake rhino horns which would be similar in a material sense. Do you know anything about that? I'm curious about the effectiveness since then.

[@Rushy89]

If caught poaching for ivory, the poacher should be killed and sell their bones. I reckon someone would buy poacher skulls.

[@MrJimheeren]

Except for the fact that most poachers are poor guys who are down to their luck. I suggest we feed the dealer and brokers to a bunch of lions. That would be fun

[@ooblah10]

I would 100% purchase a poachers skull

[@bennichols1113]

It's better to turn the poachers into rangers by running trophy hunting. Use economics instead of fight economics.

[@TremereTT]

I have two tusks of a young elephant with bite marks of something on it, may be a lion or hyenas idk. My grandpa found the carkasse of a small elelphant when my family lived in Angola and it was still a Portuguese colony. I put them on the wall next to some Ironwood art, like masks and figurines, from local Angolan artists. It's a cool material...our friends allways think it's just heavy plastic.. If 26 million elephants loose 5% of it's population by natural death and replace 5% every year, wouldn't that make for way more ivory than currently gets on the black marked through puching? Just collecting ivory from naturally died elephant carcasses and a way bigger population, couldn't that be a win-win solution?

[@beancole]

That would surely create a market, that could potentially increase the demand beyond that of natural deaths.

[@ross335]

Mammoth ivory is also a good alternative for people who want the genuine thing. Mammoths are already extinct and can't suffer from demand for their ivory.

[@beancole]

But the trade does create a market for ivory, which if it increases puts demand on living elephants.

[@Sara3346]

I get the demand for ivory for teeth but like their other animals with large enough tusks for that though.

[@henriettanovember4733]

🐘

[@ironman5034]

An idea, would be to teach my fellow africans how to make these synthetic ivory, they can flood the market and they can earn money as well as reduce the appetite of those that uses ivory in nefarious things

[@draculastraphouse6637]

I wish I could interact with an elephant or dolphin and feel their intelligence for myself. We're not so different

[@JL-ti3us]

is this the same Richard Leaky who is a famous anthropologist?

[@nareshclark8916]

Oh and Kenya's band on trophy hunting has only really worked for elephants. Rhinos, giraffes, and many rare antelope species have actually experienced massive declines over the past 20+ years, whilst southern African countries that encourage trophy hunting, have seen an opposing trend of great population growth. You see trophy hunting gives land owners a reason to keep not just a couple, but whole herds of elephants on their land year round, instead of pushing them out or killing them as soon as they are seen on their property.

[@bennichols1113]

Glad there are still some intelligent people around.

[@BigBismark]

Not Asian markets CHINESE markets.

[@TheOtherGuys2]

Hm, what do you know.. It turns out law enforcement being armed actually keeps laws from being broken as much.

[@ninatrabona4629]

Might there be a way of defacing the tusks of living elephants so they are no longer attractive to poachers? Pigs also have tusks that might be carved and some people do eat pigs so the tusks might be developed as a craft supply. Wild boar tusks could become a hunting trophy or turned in for a reward in areas in USA where feral pig populations are getting to be a problem.

[@Marco-fn6kg]

we need more elwphants !! more reserves !!! we will thank ourselves later when we are again rich in nature !!

[@comradeweismann6947]

Fish

[@bradmakesgains8779]

Marble looks better than ivory anyways

[@Gematrinator]

Elephant are the most magnificent animal on the planet

[@Sara3346]

Wait dentin can be made from plants? How?

[@vladimirputout2461]

Russia is growing in the ivory market, exploring their mammoth ivory reserves

[@rbj5767]

❣️🙏🐘🐘🐘💔💋💢👑🌈🦹‍♀️💫💫💫

[@MrDion023]

Ivory ,, something we dont need from the last century

[@tss9886]

My parents have two tusks not carved or anything they are antique and have been passed down through the family since about 1900. They want to get rid of them but have no idea how. They don't approve of what they represent and can't sell them. Throwing them out doesn't seem feasible.

[@cameron9206]

Just have them bury them somewhere, it’d be like giving it back to the earth

[@ambikadealwis8636]

Our countrys elephant population has dropped to 2000 elephants only, and all the elephants are getting drawf elephants, from the very big elephants used for war around 200ad to 3000bc theys only 20 of the war elphant left in the entire country. - Sri Lanka

[@iliketocrypto]

i dont think you really delved into the problems with just banning shit and how it doesnt work though

[@MossyEarth]

Hi Daniel, apologies if it felt that way as we cut a lot of script to get this video across the line. It actually started as a video solely on the ivory trade, before changing course due to a lack of interest, so some points were stripped bare by the end. In general, as long as there is a demand for something then people will find a way to sell it regardless of bans. While they help to cut demand significantly, as it effectively eliminates the average buyer out of the equation, anyone who REALLY wants ivory will find a market. A good recent example of this happened when China banned ivory trading. This tanked the public perception of ivory there, and as they were the largest remaining market that resulted in the global price plummeting. However, any people who still wanted ivory could easily cross the border into the "Golden Triangle" (an area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet that is run by a drug lord and home to every type of illegal activity you can imagine) and buy ivory there. Essentially the trade can only be truly crushed for good when ivory becomes almost entirely undesirable to own, and hence becomes unprofitable to poach. - Tom

[@iliketocrypto]

@@MossyEarth yeah, and one way to decrease demand is to educate people on the damage caused by the ivory trade so well done and thank you. I also wonder if improving the overall economy of africa could make poaching less *relatively* profitable compared to other industries

[@bennichols1113]

@@iliketocrypto demand is controlled by price.

[@aaronlair5360]

The aim of the poaching is the extinction of the species. It would drive the prices up because there is no supply. Looping trophy hunters into the same category as poachers is quite frankly insulting. Poachers hunt illegally, and hunters get a tag to hunt a particular species or animal for a variety of reasons.

[@bennichols1113]

The aim of poaching is just the same as any other job. Make some money. Trophy hunting does that better.

[@MamboGimbobili]

How can Allan Savory's Wikipedia page not even mention his involvement in killing those elephants? I suspect he wrote it himself

[@ODJJ-77.83]

55

[@m.afajar854]

banning ivory or anything is good and all but changing the mind? oh i dont like how that sound

[@petrfedor1851]

Why use ivory if you can use teeth of people involved in ivory market!

[@huldu]

I'm not surprised that the tactic in Kenya worked so well. People tend to be somewhat afraid of actually dying. I also know that their view on human life isn't the same as in the west. It's just very sad because you know these poachers are doing it because they're getting paid. What's the alternative, starve to death? If you're poor(not that poverty alone is a driving factor) you have to do what you can do to survive in the world today. Unless you fix the underlying problem you're only pushing these people to do something else, which can be many illegal activities, like child labor or worse.

[@nareshclark8916]

ok you've got a few things wrong there. First off, population growth rates are on average 8.1% per year, with places like the Okavango and Kruger experiencing 16.5% growth per year. Secondly, that growth is not balanced by natural death in a lot of places, if it was, we wouldn't have huge areas of southern Africa with too many elephants for the habitat available.

[@galileugalilei1434]

100th coment

[@internetpleb4854]

Flood the market with fake ivory deflate the price for genuine ivory and make it unprofitable.

[@astupidlylongnamethatstoolong]

Speaking of alternative "ivory', there are even indian crafters that continue their tradition by using bones of animals from butchers instead as their alternative and they look about as real. There really never was a reason for ivory to be logically poached.

[@evelynnoble495]

That’s so sad we shouldn’t kill elephants it’s just evil

[@hmao4466]

Unless this is translated into Chinese it is not going to make any difference.

[@eskedarmandefro7275]

Elphant is my favorite animal that are being killed by these greedy dumb poachers

[@AndrewDavis-sj6mb]

I would be the NIGHTMARE of poachers, The non-dying dream of elephants

[@joegoddard9661]

Having yourself as a sponsor seems a bit dodgy? So people donate money to the mossy earth foundation and you then ‘sponsor’ this video through the foundation meaning you’re taking the foundation money and ‘paying’ your KZbin channel for publication on your own foundation? Correct me if I’m missing something but seems like a very sneaky way of being able to legally steal donations by ‘paying yourself’ from a charity to your KZbin ??😑

[@bennichols1113]

Why shut down trade? Ivory is a sustainable resource if managed properly.